that interpol victory but another winter came along. and. by the end of nine hundred forty two the germans realized they were unlikely to capture leningrad and stepped up their artillery assault on the besieged city. in january the soviet army broke through a small section of the and so the corridor was a used for sending supplies to the besieged city by rail. operation january from the storm got underway the soviet army pushed the enemy back a hundred kilometers from leningrad. see. the sea except that this flood has exploded is jealous since nine hundred day siege that cost hundreds of thousands of civilian lives was a river. for

those people the tram became a symbolic time machine. during the journey they remembered the nine hundred days the committee broke them but made that friendship stronger. this is more a region is economically and socially one of russia's better developed provinces the region has a significant scientific and industrial capacity that will realize its full potential after the construction of the. is completed the idea has r. and d. projects in the spheres of automotive construction aerospace and oil chemistry high tech data center furbished with cutting edge servers and communication equipment will be constructed at the core of the park the project has been personally approved by prime minister vladimir putin the federal government is planning to

allocate sizable funding for the parks construction investors will be given benefits such as property tax exemption low land rental prices and other preferences but it is the samoa region government is open to mutually beneficial cooperation we invite investors to participate in existing projects and we are ready to give a hand of fulfilling your projects and growing your business in the samoa region. new details emerge after russian pilots saved everyone on board a crippled passenger plane by crash landing at a short airstrip in remote woodlands. the pilots increasingly being called heroes for that conduct find out why just a minute. a joke too close for comfort a former u.s. soldier faces condemnation for planting grenades in the cars of iraqis for a while. and britain's special envoy to afghanistan

steps down and speculation he was driven out because of his continued criticism of the military campaign. broadcasting live from our studios in central moscow this is our t.v. certainly glad to have you with us prosecutors are investigating the crash landing of a crippled russian airliner in the northwest of the country all eighty one people on board had a miraculous escape when the plane overshot an abandoned airstrip on tuesday and slammed into trees. bark and reports. near rock hyllus that's what experts and passengers a calling the crash landing of this plane in the russian taiga without anyone injured most even the most willingly ever in history and ended up in the woods the

majesty crews arrived to find to wait everything was organized very fast asleep and it was not for the professionalism of the crew we would not be standing here. the tupolev one five four was flying at ten thousand meters on its way to moscow from russia's far east when there was a massive electrical failure the plane lost all automatic navigation and communication its fuel supply and wing flaps were crippled meaning i had to land quickly and at higher than normal speeds even the lights in the cabin and cockpit went out by sight alone the pilots found an abandoned their strip in the depths of the forest and managed to land on the third attempt but the look of course it's not being used for what it was intended because it's a helicopter airdrome the ground was too hard and without any runway markings but you have to be a monster to land the plane like this what is most important is the insurance and ability and professionalism of the whole crew if the whole crew listens to their

pilot and he really acts with responsibility for the whole plane this is the main thing this means it's a professional crew the proof is that no one was injured on board the plane the runway was too small for the plane and it overshot plowing through two hundred meters of trees before stopping but despite the danger all eighty one people on board were evacuated to safety. investigators now pondering what caused such a massive electrical failure providing that to police what fifty four is not quite the brand new aircraft and i'm sure that that craft was manufactured probably at least twenty years ago where you would more. i believe there is a chance that they we planned it was just a war of all rosso and lines which owns the plane says it wasn't aware of any issues with it so when a professional to get an investigation committee is working out the site to find out what really happened before the flight the plane was functioning normally it on the ground planned technical maintenance and preflight checks as

a seventy two passengers only two people a married couple refused to continue their journey by plane they went by train there was no real panic when the plane landed there was slight nervousness because there were emergency slides and everyone was anxious to leave the plane as soon as possible but the stewards did everything well and the evacuation was done in a normal manner to the pilots helping investigators to examine the scene before following the passengers back to the capital in a few days but whatever the technical courses there already calls for them to receive medals for bravery and skill with the passengers now back in moscow everyone's awaiting the return of the two pilots and when they do come back it will be to a hero's welcome tamasin r.t. moscow. a former u.s. sergeant who served in iraq has secretly planted grenades in the cars of iraqis and checkpoints for a prank he filmed himself and the reaction of drivers as a joke and posted it on you tube but as our teams of policy are reports most iraqis

see nothing funny about life in a conflict zone. manning a checkpoint all day must get boring which is perhaps why sergeant dunson and his partner admit they passed the time playing jokes on unsuspecting drivers in the future posting dunson describes how they planted a grenade in an iraqi man's car a few seconds of confusion all is explained and the perplexed but very relieved driver is sent on his way. you know because. our our it was that one of those being where you know it happened. on a guy like that on but for most iraqis this is not fun and life here is very far from being a joke. i think it's only for them to laugh for us it's not funny but very scary. we're used to par bombs explosions the search is happening every day but if someone

did this to me i would be so scared. as would most people in a country where a checkpoint can often mean the difference between life and death it's not uncommon to have your heart take at least a dozen times a day if you're found to have either way what you see here when they will be arrested on this and. terrorism. and some american military personnel are not seeing the funny side of sergeant dunstan's antics i would not tolerate that and my organization. i don't think that's conducive to gaining. you know into the partnership with with the federal police or certainly and trusting their confidence in us or the people for that matter and trusting the. trusting in the federal police doc to fight him out but that army has never been pranked himself but claims to have witnessed american soldiers displaying even more alarming behavior on africa on him and i personally know of many cases where soldiers would

take effect and for example hey it's an iraqi citizen just respond there were cases where people died from this so-called son we had about one hundred fifty thousand american soldiers here and although some were professional there were many who were not. but i want to a local t.v. stations you know picked up on the idea. that it takes well known local celebrities to iraq each. points and plays pranks on them in much the same way as dunson and his colleagues produce and not by he says it's a way to lighten the situation. we're not making fun of the iraqi forces they're very brave and frightened but we wanted to present them in a unique and different way and we also wanted to present weapons is something people can laugh about even if. there's mixed reaction to the iraqi show but still iraqis making fun of iraqis is very different according to most people here to

americans getting in on the act and with people still being killed in iraq every day it was a constant reminder that terrorism is no laughing matter. r.t. baghdad in sticking with iraq at least six people have been killed and thirty five wounded in separate attacks in baghdad on wednesday a civilian and three policemen were killed when twin car bombs exploded in the south of the city two people were killed in a simultaneous double blast near a bus station in eastern baghdad on tuesday a gunman wearing an iraqi army uniform shot dead two u.s. soldiers. coming up later battle on the scene. we tried to shoot them a just to stop them but they fired back law enforcement to try to stop poachers that are pushing at the sturgeon towards extinction in the hunt for black gold.

the u.s. is keen to promote relations with russia to benefit the rest of the world hillary clinton made the comments during a speech to the council on foreign relations in washington the secretary of state says it's vital that past differences are finally put aside. with russia when we took office it was amid cooling to cold relations and a return to cold war suspicion now this may have invigorated spy novelist's and armchair strategists but anyone serious about solving global problems such as nuclear proliferation knew that without russia and the united states working together little would be achieved so we refocused the relationship. we offered a relationship based on not only mutual respect but also mutual responsibility and in the course of the last eighteen months we have a historic new arms reduction treaty which the senate will take up next week. cooperation with china in the u.n.

security council on tough new sanctions against both iran and north korea a transit agreement to support our efforts in afghanistan a new bilateral presidential commission and civil society exchange that are forging closer people to people ties and of course as we were reminded this past summer the spy novel is still have plenty to write about so it's kind of a win win. russia and the u.s. have been resetting relations for well over a year in a bid to tackle major international issues political analyst clifford says even when presidents make friends it's only the tip of the reset iceberg. while presidents obama and mitt got to. get along very well and i think they're genuinely friends. it's a very different and a long hard process to make the bureaucracies trust each other so you get direction from the top and then still nothing happens once you go further and further down

there's really no constituency in the united states good strongly supports us russian relations we need business to business relationship to grow substantially before the new relationship we'll have a really solid foundation. and you can check out that entire interview with clifford in about ten minutes time right here on our team. the chairman of a russian bank has been shot dead in moscow sixty six year old me. was gunned down as he was leaving his office a murder investigation is under way with police examining c.c.t.v. footage from a nearby restaurant eyewitness reports claim a man that was seen fleeing the scene shortly after the shooting an entire village was reduced to ashes in southern siberia following the latest outbreak of wildfires to hit russia over four hundred homes were destroyed after

high winds swept fires into the region from neighboring kazakhstan authorities say the affected villages were evacuated and that there were no reports of any injuries emergency services managed to extinguish of blaze at another nearby village but say at least three other residential areas are still at risk wide fires that cost russia this summer have claimed more than sixty lives russia's president dmitri medvedev has blamed local authorities for failing to deal with the situation and promised that failure to improve will be met with dismissals. the truth in the. old is that the current laws and level of organization of forest management and not good enough current laws give responsibility to the regions but it doesn't allow for that responsibility to be withdrawn it is a fight. if it happens it should lead to the instant firing of officials of the governor but in that it would be looking at and of course our website has a lot more stories for you to explore whenever you like here's

a taste of what's online right now at our team dot com. anti immigrant sentiment is still sweeping parts of the u.s. despite recent polls suggesting that the inflow of migrants fell by more than a half in the past few years. and the birth of the north korean leader is shrouded in mystery but evidence suggests kim jong il may have been born in a small village in russia's far east for more head to our team back home. the u.k. is a special envoy to afghanistan who's been an outspoken critic of the military policy there has stepped down from his position but the move has a field speculation that sharad cooper coals was forced out because of his views on the conflict artie's laura emmett is following the story for us in london. he had clashed with u.s. and nato officials his line has always been that there is no military solution to the problems that we're seeing in afghanistan and the only way forward is to open

some sort of dialogue a close an egg of relationships with the taliban and the military solution just isn't viable he also. in june two thousand and ten he took an extended leave of absence from his post and already a couple of months ago it seems unlikely that he would return possibly a slightly less clear cut issue is whether he jumped or was pushed he was quite influential with david miliband who was the former foreign secretary before this new government came in four months ago but the moment the new government was appointed the new foreign secretary william hague put his position under review as to the question certainly is did his skepticism about u.s. foreign policy in the region mean that he had to go and his job was to coordinate strategy with the u.s. and with other countries that had troops that have troops in the region which is obviously a diplomatic position and diplomacy doesn't seem to be something that he either had

much of or didn't didn't want to use this in this case and there's certainly a suggestion that he got into so many disputes with so many different people that they rendered his position really untenable now the interesting thing is that the foreign office in the u.k. says that the position of special representative is no longer necessary and that bearing in mind that the u.k. will no longer now have a full time special representative dealing with afghan afghanistan and pakistan that's a region that the new government itself has identified as a key foreign policy priority so that is an interesting point and that reporting very just a couple of hours away from our extensive live coverage of the global policy forum in russia jaroslav all it's attracted a vast political crowd from some third. countries as well as several heads of state the press attache for the russian president natalya team a cola says everyone's looking forward to some wide ranging dialogue at

a forum. this forum is taking place only for the second time but it has already attracted a lot of interest from our foreign partners as well as political circles aside from the russian president italy's prime minister silvio berlusconi and south korea's president lee myung bak will take place in the forum a large number of prominent florida and russian political analysts will participate and work in different fields i'm sure will draw lots of interesting conclusions during the forum president medvedev will meet his foreign colleagues and make an address but will also separately meet with russian and foreign political experts to discuss the problems and achievements during the year the plenitude was to bits. when it's something really. what you want to get down to. the latest. round.

discussions on the modern state. security and stability of the present day one. question. let's take a look at some headlines from around the world right now an investigation into the gulf of mexico oil spill says that the oil company was to blame only with a number of contractors the report that took around five months pointed to a chain of failures involving the various parties in the biggest environmental disaster to hit america b.p. says it excepts all recommendations in the report and will implement them worldwide the rig explosion in april after eleven workers dead and causing lots of oil in. the u.s. pastor of a small church in florida says he will go ahead with burning copies of the koran despite international condemnation the dove world outreach center plans to mark saturday's anniversary of the september eleventh attacks by burning copies of the

islamic book it's meant to be a warning to all radical muslims the obama administration has described the stunt as a disgrace fearing the act could even endangered troops' lives. hundreds of people took to the streets of los angeles to protest against the shooting of a guatemalan immigrant by a police officer protesters threw rocks and eggs at a local police station and officers responded with rubber bullets more than twenty demonstrators were arrested earlier about three hundred people were blocking a nearby intersection as part of their protests. poacher's hunting for black caviar may soon force one of russia's natural treasures into extinction. went to russia's southern region to find out how the authorities are fighting back against illegal fishermen. a weekly raid on poaches in the volga delta. that caviar in each one of these jars is worth fifteen thousand dollars fishing wild sturgeon is highly

illegal but the ban has simply driven the prices up making poaching ever more lucrative poaches supply forty nine out of every fifty jars of caviar consumed. colonel gets in below shows the equipment he sees in just the last few months was a chest all around there are hundreds of foremen cruising speed boats equipped with remote is satellite navigation and weapons we try to shoot their motors to stop them but they fire back and we can't get them all. the caspian sea produces the vast majority of the world's black caviar but the population of sturgeon n. it has dropped by forty times in just two decades the local university is now simply trying to save the genetic samples before it's too late because when you think without scientists and fish breeders the sturgeon would have become extinct or reading what i would be seen only in aquariums this is

a catastrophe. the government subsidizes breeding farms such as this one to try and avoid the extinction successful breeding is difficult even here it takes sturgeon until they're nearly ten to start reproducing but at least their offspring are not destined for the dinner table. here they release about one million fish every single year but then. free most of them are legally fished again meaning that the population is not likely to recover for decades despite installing millions of dollars but the manager say only better regulation can change the situation. but the problem isn't the people here on the ground the problem is corruption and a higher level a whole system has been constructed to make sure that those who break the law do not pay. meanwhile colonel gets and goes out on another raid he knows that the general character of poachers awaits him. even if you arrest them today. place them

to morrow. russia and the u.s. have been steaming ahead in resetting relations but there's still plenty to be done the two countries are hoping to see eye to eye on issues like globalization geopolitics and nuclear nonproliferation r.t. sat down with political analyst clifford to get his take on how well this new starts been going.

clifford cup chan research director at the eurasia group and former senior official at the u.s. state department is here with us today thank you very much for joining us mr cupp turly opinion is divided on the so-called recess in the u.s. russia relations hall would you assess it cheap amount so far is it really a fresh start a fresh start and i think so far it's worked the best examples or the new start treaty. better russian cooperation with the u.s. . iran on iran policy which is probably in the obama administration's top priority we see w t o moving forward but slowly so there are modest achievements but it's a whole lot better than it was a year ago two years ago how different do you think president obama's foreign

policy is to that of george w. bush i think it's very different this president. seeks to inform our allies and cooperate in countries he seeks to consult with them. president bush had in my view is that habit of telling us our allies and our strengths and you want to work live like russia lecturing lecturing at a time after the fact after the decision was taken so i think. this president seeks to build consensus i fear that president bush took unilateral action in my view too often what's the biggest obstacle in the way of improving russian american relations are several off circles the first is that while presidents obama and medvedev. get along very well and i think they're genuinely friends individually it's a very different a long hard process to make the bureaucracies trust each other so you get direction

from the top and then still nothing happens once you go further and further down and areas like arms control areas like b.t.o. if the inspections don't work if the trade agreements don't get written progress really doesn't go forward so that's one optical the second optical is that there's really no constituency in the united states yet that strongly supports us russian relations we need business to business relationship to grow substantially before the new relationship will have a really solid foundation how can this be tackled in order to find a workable solution tackled by the two sides frankly. american capital american investors. who support president medvedev actually six as in california as in silicon valley still don't trust the russian market so in my view. steps like the international financial staff center the b.t.o. accession regulatory reform are very important i mean look there's

a. phrase on wall street that capital is a coward capitalist scared american capitalist over scared of russia until russia take steps to calm american capital you're not going to get the movement forward towards increasing trade flows towards building that core constituency and will the west ever become for civil with russia's ambitions to increase its influence in global economic and political a fast i think is going to be a fairly slow process there's still a trust gap. a trust a gap between russia and the west when russia and the u.s. even met with president obama but russia is still not very popular on capitol hill in the u.s. congress there are broad segments of the american political system which still don't trust russia so that i think it will take years of russia maybe a decade being a reliable energy supplier to europe no more ukraine disruptions it will take. some

years of russia working together on iran on the major nonproliferation problems i think it is it an issue that can be overcome the that i think trust can be built but we're not there yet to be sure of what iran's nuclear program is now by father hope to stop it on the international news agenda iran's fast nuclear power plant and will share went live in august do you think yes suspicions about iran's possible development all for atomic weapons are justified in my view u.s. suspicions are justified there is a consensus among u.s. european union and the international atomic energy agency that iran has been taking steps and probably currently is taking steps to develop a nuclear weapon. about that. what is frustrating is that the iranians if you can clarify. what they're doing to the international agency and my own trip to iran and i asked many times and the answer you get is that there is

a thought to be a religious law against developing nuclear technology nuclear weapons in iran in my view is just nonsense because that is what they're doing so so u.s. concerns are justified this is a very important issue which one i think the russian government now completely understands and it's one we all have to deal with is iran really suffering iran's economy out to have fresh package of sanctions was introduced well not yet but i think it's very important that this latest. array of sanctions u.n. sanctions u.s. sanctions any use actions were unprecedented in their severity iranian banks have a great deal of trouble now doing business globally. both in europe and increasingly in asia japanese banks are pulling out of iran. uranian. oil industry which provides eighty percent of export revenues and fifty percent of the rand budget rather is on a downward trajectory now they can get away for two or three.